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The movie begins by acknowledging its sources of visual
inspiration. We see a claustrophobic Allen trapped in a railroad car (that's
from the opening of “8 1/2,” with Marcello Mastroianni trapped in an auto), and
the harsh black-and-white lighting and the ticking of a clock on the sound
track give us a cross-reference to the nightmare that opens Ingmar Bergman's “Wild
Strawberries.” Are these the exact scenes Allen had in mind? Probably, but no
matter; he clearly intends “Stardust Memories” to be his “8 1/2,” and it
develops as a portrait of the artist's complaints.

Most of the action of the film centers around
two subjects. The first is a weekend film seminar (obviously patterned after
Judith Crist's weekends at Tarrytown, N.Y.), to which the Allen character has
been invited. The second subject is a very familiar one, Allen's stormy
relationships with women. The subjects blend into the basic complaint of the
Woody Allen persona we have come to know and love, and can be summarized
briefly: If I'm so famous and brilliant and everybody loves me, then why
doesn't anybody in particular love me?

At the film seminar, the Allen character is
constantly besieged by groupies. They come in all styles: pathetic young girls
who want to sleep with him, fans who want his autograph, weekend culture
vultures, and people who spend all their time at one event promoting the next
one they're attending. Allen makes his point early, by shooting these
unfortunate creatures in close-up with a wide-angle lens that makes them all
look like Martians with big noses. They add up to a nightmare, a nonstop
invasion of privacy, a shrill chorus of people whose praise for the artist is
really a call for attention.

Fine, except what else does Allen have to say
about them? Nothing. In the Fellini film, the director-hero was surrounded by
sycophants, business associates, would-be collaborators, wives, mistresses, old
friends, all of whom made calls on his humanity. In the Allen picture, there's
no depth, no personal context: They're only making calls on his time. What's
more, the Fellini character was at least trying to create something, to harass
his badgered brain into some feeble act of thought. But the Allen character
expresses only impotence, despair, uncertainty, discouragement. All through the
film, Allen keeps talking about diseases, catastrophes, bad luck that befalls
even the most successful. Yes, but that's what artists are for: to hurl their
imagination, joy, and conviction into the silent maw. Sorry if I got a little
carried away. “Stardust Memories” inspires that kind of frustration, though,
because it's the first Woody Allen film in which impotence has become the
situation rather than the problem. This is a movie about a guy who has given
up. His relationships with women illustrate that; after the marvelous and
complex women in “Annie Hall” and Manhattan, in “Stardust Memories” we get a
series of enigmas and we never really feel that Allen is connecting with them.
These women don't represent failed relationships, they represent
walk-throughs.

Woody Allen has always loved jazz and the great
mainstream American popular music. There's a lot of it in “Stardust Memories,”
but it doesn't amplify or illustrate the scene this time it steals them.
There's a scene where Allen remembers a wonderful spring morning spent with a
former love (Charlotte Rampling), and how he looked up in his apartment to see
her there, and for a moment felt that life was perfect. As Allen shows that
moment, Louis Armstrong sings "Stardust" on the sound track, and something
happens that should not be allowed to happen. We find our attention almost
entirely on Armstrong's wonderfully loose jazz phrasing.

“Stardust Memories” is a disappointment. It
needs some larger idea, some sort of organizing force, to pull together all
these scenes of bitching and moaning, and make them lead somewhere.

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